In a surprising move, Amazon has announced that it will discontinue the celebrity voices feature for Alexa. Notably, the voices of Samuel L. Jackson, Shaquille O’Neal, and Melissa McCarthy will no longer be available for purchase, and support for these voices on Alexa devices will also cease.
Launched with a modest price of $0.99 before later moving up to $4.99, the celebrity voices feature added an element of fun and personality to Alexa devices. Users could command Alexa with a “Hey [celebrity name]” to ask questions, hear jokes, or listen to a story, all delivered in the distinctive style of the chosen celebrity. However, this amusing functionality has been curtailed; Jackson’s voice, for instance, has already stopped working on customer device. Amazon introduced Jackson’s voice in 2019, utilizing its neural text-to-speech model to generate engaging (and occasionally explicit) responses rather than relying on pre-recorded ones. The voices of McCarthy and Shaq were added in 2021. However, the celebrity voices were somewhat limited in their functionality, as they could not be used for tasks such as shopping lists, reminders, or skills.Customers who previously purchased the celebrity voice experience have some reprieve. They may continue to use the skill until April 2023 for Samuel L. Jackson and until September 30th of the same year for McCarthy and Shaq.
While the precise reasons behind this discontinuation remain unclear, speculation points to broader issues with Amazon’s Alexa sector. A report from The Wall Street Journal last November disclosed that Amazon CEO Andy Jassy had heavily scrutinized the Alexa sector due to operating losses exceeding $5 million in recent years. Concurrently, Amazon announced layoffs affecting 18,000 employees earlier this year, with 2,000 of those cuts impacting the division in charge of Alexa and Echo product. Another factor that could have influenced this decision is Amazon’s apparent plans to revamp Alexa in response to the rise of advanced AI like ChatGPT. Reports suggest that Amazon aims to utilize its own large language model to make Alexa more proactive and conversational. It’s plausible that the celebrity voices feature didn’t align with this vision, or simply became too costly to maintain. While the discontinuation of Alexa’s celebrity voices marks the end of an era, it could also signal the beginning of a new one, as Amazon appears to be pushing for a more practical and conversational future for its voice assistant. The implications of these changes for users and the wider voice assistant industry remain to be seen.
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